Residence

We smile, we love, we cry. There’s an outdated story in pop, about younger artists (girls, often) shaped by the studio Svengalis (men, always) who’re the true, not-so-secret geniuses behind the acts. Over the previous few years, for a lot of artists, the anxiousness to release new music and keep relevant has largely overtaken the time and care that wants to go into actually impactful and nicely-conceived initiatives.

Whereas 20-somethings have been earnestly debating the intersectional politics of Beyoncé videos, some variety of their youthful counterparts had been trawling the web wilds, fixating on kids with face tattoos consuming Xanax like popcorn and setting issues on fire.

The controversy over the banning of “Justify My Love” by the Canadian music video community MuchMusic led to the launching in 1991 of Too Much 4 Much , a sequence of occasional, late-night time specials (nonetheless being aired within the early 2000s) during which videos officially banned by MuchMusic have been broadcast, adopted by panel dialogue relating to why they had been eliminated.

Seldom has that ever been more clear than in the “.J.” video, which lifts its inspiration from a set of racist Looney Tunes cartoons from the ’40s, casting himself and others in blackface and hammering home the message of the tune’s lyrics by the visible.

But for all the elaborate choreography and staging, essentially the most indelible moment remains the curl of lead singer Gerard Approach’s decrease lip as he sings the ultimate tearjerking refrain – a reminder that the song was inspired by Gerard and bassist brother Mikey’s late grandmother, and thus the video held far more weight than simply the prop coffin they were carrying.